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October 30, 2009
Top Stories
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Sports Shots Major League Baseball stuck in the past, neglects fans When the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees met on Wednesday night in the Bronx, the driving rain was nothing but entertainment for Phillies starting pitcher Cliff Lee, as he cruised his team to a near-shutout of the Yankees.Despite the competitive baseball that is certain to be played between these two powerhouses, the MLB is doing its best job of screwing up what remains of "America's pastime." Three unfortunate things stand out in the state of baseball: officiating, fan friendliness and scheduling. Commissioner Bud Selig clearly lags behind his NFL counterpart Roger Goodell in these three main facets in their respective sports. First off, MLB needs to do something to alter their mammoth schedule. A 162-game schedule for the regular season is far too long. The season started when I was a junior at Susquehanna and will finish during my senior year. I propose that baseball cuts back by 15-to-20 games, perhaps by getting rid of interleague play or cutting back on intra-divisional games. Nobody gets anything out of those Nationals-Orioles games, plus why do the St. Louis Cardinals play 80 games within their division? That is practically half of their games coming within the central division, which is an absurd amount. By cutting back on the number of games in the regular season, this also pushes forward the late starts to the World Series. Bud Selig should be thanking the Phillies for taking down the Colorado Rockies in their divisional series matchup, as it snowed in Denver this week. Already starting at a reasonably late Oct. 28, if the series goes the distance in the best-of seven series, the final game won't be played until Nov. 5, in what is sure to be a frigid night in the Bronx. Playing the Series in mid-October would present better weather in a sport that is dependent on good playing conditions. A perfect example of Selig's ineptitude came during last year's Series matchup between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Phillies. The Rays, a team dependent on its speed and athleticism, were utterly restricted of that during game five between the teams. In 30-degree weather and driving rain, Selig and MLB finally called the game, thankfully after the Rays had tied the game up (the Phillies' first Series win in 25 years could have come on a rain shortened game). Play finally resumed 50 hours after the fifth game began, the Phillies closed out the victory and all was forgotten. If Selig wants to keep the late-October, early-November schedule, how about starting the games a bit earlier instead of past 8 p.m. Baseball games, particularly playoff games, tend to drag on to the following day. This would also let kids-- a huge target audience for the present and the future-- stay up and watch, instead of being sent to bed for school in the morning. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Manager Mike Scioscia, normally soft spoken, called baseball's playoff format unreasonable due to the extra days off rewarded to teams to comfort baseball's television partners. Scioscia said: "I think you lose a lot of the integrity of what the season means when you have three days off at the end of the season to let other teams maybe reset their starting rotation, which is an advantage of clinching early. That's negated when any team can do it just by getting to the playoffs." Scioscia is not the only one dissatisfied with MLB and its policies. Selig and his cohorts have created a league in which the fan is not one of its top priorities. He let malcontent and the antithesis of a good teammate Barry Bonds smash McGwire's short homerun record and then proceed to break classy legend Hank Aaron's all-time homeruns record. By the time Bonds beat out Aaron's record, his head was the size of a medicine ball. Fans have repeatedly been let down by perceived stars: Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield and Roger Clemens. Try searching for baseball videos on YouTube; there are no official videos, only fan made videos, which tend to be much lower quality. Baseball takes down videos frequently and makes locating the Bermuda Triangle easier than locating the top plays from games played on Aug. 12. Check out mefeedia.com and search, "MLB Orders Teams to Change Names." The video describes how MLB is not letting Little Leaguers use anything with team names on their apparel. They only allow jerseys to be purchased from Majestic, which is far too expensive for parents to pay for. Instead, all of the kids in the league were forced to wear Bulldogs jerseys, with the different teams having some variation of Bulldogs on it. Despite the lack of dedication to the fans, baseball still attracts a large viewership, particularly when teams from such markets as Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles play. Go to a Rays game against the Red Sox in July, and at least 80 percent of the stadium will be lined with Red Sox fans. This leads to my last chief complaint with baseball, and probably the most important: the umpiring. Even though baseball added instant replay like the NFL did, it only instituted it deciding on home run balls. This postseason umpires have been exposed by calls, some clearly awful, in which foul balls, safe-or-out plays and other plays have been visibly wrong. I tend to give the umpire the benefit of the doubt most of the time (the job is thankless and you are never given credit for anything, but blamed for everything), but some of the calls made this postseason have been mind-boggling. While Goodell and the NFL's fine players for wearing their socks the wrong way, they at least make the sports fan friendly and have nearly mastered the fine line between too much officiating and the right amount of instant replay use. Selig needs to adopt a clear upgrade in the way replay is integrated into the game. Give managers two challenges during a game, and if a ball looks fair but is called foul (as seen in the Yankees-Minnesota Twins series), let the manager challenge with the use of replay. If he gets it wrong, he only has one left the rest of the game to use. If he gets it right we all win. From Kansas City Royals' Jorge Orta being called safe at first during the 1985 Series against the Cardinals, to Jeffrey Maier's robbery of the Orioles and outfielder Tony Tarasco during the 1996 American League Champion-ship Series, the list goes on with bad calls in baseball. MLB has the opportunity to win back its fans and make the sport as nearly as popular as the NFL. With a few adjustments, as well as a bevy of young studs rising to prominence like Joe Mauer, Evan Longoria, Felix Hernandez and Tim Lincecum, baseball has all of the makings to distance itself from its steroid ridden past, and place the game on a level not seen in quite some time. |
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